Nobel Laureate Paul Boyer

Paul D. Boyer, who has died aged 99, was an American biochemist who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Walker and Jens Skou for discovering aspects of how the body’s cells store and use energy – a process which affects everything from the building of bones to muscle contractions and the transmission of nerve impulses.
Boyer, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, became interested in the tiny molecule Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) when he was a graduate student in the 1940s. ATP, which was discovered in 1929, is the universal carrier of chemical energy in all living organisms. It captures the energy released from food and transfers it to functions that require energy….